Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Sony held their keynote presentation today at E3, and Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment America's Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer made a great announcement about the PlayStation Store. Starting today Anime, along with other TV shows, is now available! We have provided a screenshot from this special announcement. We were happy to see that Toei was included, but we were a little worried because while we saw other anime companies like Manga Entertainment, ADV's the Anime Network, and Nozomi Entertainment, we noticed two very big names were missing: FUNImation, and Bandai. We wondered why this was. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be on the Canadian PlayStation Store yet, but it is on the US version! We later found a press release with more highlights. This is an amazing opportunity since most video gamers are anime fans, and this is a big help in really making the PS3 and PSP the only consoles you'll ever really need (of course, we still like the Nintendo Wii and DS- there are some titles that are irresistible). We applaud the companies who worked with Sony in making this happen - this is a great new way to distribute anime and is hopefully a step in the right direction to change the anime industry in North America. To access this part of the store, hit the X-button on the filmstrip icon, and select Anime. The full presentation is up at IGN.com.